'Snapchat Dysmorphia' Now A Thing, Say Plastic Surgeons

Plastic surgeons are worried about "Snapchat dysmorphia", young people whose body image has become overly conditioned by the use of technology like Snapchat filters.

These days, teens don’t want to look like celebrities anymore. They want to look the way they look with a Snapchat filter, and they’re willing to undergo plastic surgery to make it happen.

This condition, termed “Snapchat dysmorphia,” is a new, worrying part of the spectrum of a disorder generally called body dysmorphia, says Dr. Neelam Vashi, the director of the Ethnic Skin Center at Boston University’s School of Medicine. Vashi has been noticing this pattern in her own patients for years, and on Thursday she released a viewpoint article in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery that examines in-depth the causes of this alarming trend.

“People bring in photos of themselves at certain angles or with certain kinds of lighting,” she tells Inverse. “I just see a lot of images that are just really unrealistic, and it sets up unrealistic expectations for patients because they’re trying to look like a fantasized version of themselves.”

The desire to have a curated, manicured version of one's visage is clearly shown in Bruce Sterling's video-manicuring program from his 1985 novel Schismatrix:

Lindsay had a brief glimpse of the man's true appearance - white hair in spiky disarray, red-rimmed eyes - before a video-manicuring program came on line. The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.
(Read more about Sterling's video-manicuring program)

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